


Cut to the Feeling

by Stegaysaurus



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Cuddling, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Tenderness, crowley struggles with words, so he bares his soul instead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-28 03:43:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20419358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stegaysaurus/pseuds/Stegaysaurus
Summary: “Angel,” Crowley interrupts, rubbing his clammy palms on his trousers. A major design flaw, in his opinion. “I don’t need to be baited with alcohol to come in, you know. I’d love to.”“O-oh,” Aziraphale breathes, a little relieved smile on his face. “Well, we can have a glass anyway, if you’d like.”Crowley sighs again, soft and fond this time, and reaches out to take the angel’s hand. He still smells a little bit like Hell, when he brings it to his lips, and Crowley wants to wipe the stench from his skin. Aziraphale looks quite stunned, and Crowley’s not quite sure how he can be any clearer.“Anything,” he says, “if it means we can be together.”





	Cut to the Feeling

The sun is setting. It casts a creamy orange glow over the usually dreary London sky, rapidly sinking into a deep blue, and two beings sit in a Bentley outside of an old bookshop in SoHo. Both want the same thing, to be together, and both believe that the other does not.

“Crowley,” says one, suddenly very interested in the lines on his palms. “Would you, would you like to come in, I do believe I have some wine…”

Crowley sighs, loud and exasperated, and Aziraphale trails off with a wounded look.

“You’d probably prefer to have your space, of course, my apologies— “

“Angel,” Crowley interrupts, rubbing his clammy palms on his trousers. A major design flaw, in his opinion. “I don’t need to be baited with  _ alcohol _ to come in, you know. I’d love to.”

“O-oh,” Aziraphale breathes, a little relieved smile on his face. “Well, we can have a glass anyway, if you’d like.”

Crowley sighs again, soft and fond this time, and reaches out to take the angel’s hand. He still smells a little bit like Hell, when he brings it to his lips, and Crowley wants to wipe the stench from his skin. Aziraphale looks quite stunned, and Crowley’s not quite sure how he can be any clearer.

“Anything,” he says, “if it means we can be together.”

It sounds like a promise, like a plea, wrapped in a thin veil of conversational relevance, and he can see that Aziraphale hears it in the way his face softens, in the way his fingers shift to cup Crowley’s jaw. His thumb strokes in a gentle arc over his cheek, and Crowley lets out a shaky breath. This is it.

“Come inside,” Aziraphale whispers, impossibly tender, and who is Crowley to deny him?

Aziraphale links their fingers when Crowley comes around the car, tugging him across the street, and the demon can hardly focus on anything else. His palm is warm against his own, and a deep serpentine part of him wants to simply curl up and bask in it. They both snap to lock the door behind them, and the result is a small fire that has Crowley panicking for half a second too long. Aziraphale waves his hand to put it out, frowning at the blackened metal, before pulling Crowley into the back room.

“I love you,” Crowley blurts as the angel moves to pull away, and nearly chokes on his own tongue. Really, six millennia of plans and speeches and grand moving gestures to finally,  _ finally _ declare his undying love down the drain. He’d think it unfortunate, if he weren’t freaking out about the way Aziraphale’s shoulders stiffened, the way his fingers froze awkwardly between his knuckles, as though time stopped before he could fully pull away. Aziraphale turns to look at him with big, stunned eyes.

“Don’t look so shocked, angel, really,” he mutters, tucking his chin in and staring at the cluttered top of Aziraphale’s desk. Fingers that don’t belong to him very carefully remove his glasses.

“Well,” Aziraphale breathes, suddenly very close, “it’s the first time you’ve said it.”

“Did me begging you to run off with me not do it?” Crowley teases lightly, “Or the books? France?  _ Hamlet _ ?”

“I thought Hamlet was because I went to Edinburgh,” Aziraphale murmurs, cheeks flushed a lovely red.

“Hamlet was because you looked at me with that  _ face _ , the one you do when you want me to do something but don’t want to ask for it, and I knew I’d rehang the stars if that’s what you wanted.”

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale sighs, and Crowley doesn’t respond because his mouth is suddenly very busy doing something else.

Aziraphale is  _ very _ warm against him, and Crowley gathers him close and pours everything he has into the kiss all at once. Aziraphale grips his shoulders, swept up in Crowley’s enthusiasm, and hangs on for dear life. Love bleeds through his clothes everywhere Crowley is pressed against him, making his lips tingle and filling his mouth with sugar. He tries to return it, letting everything he’d kept so tightly boxed up explode out of him, and Crowley staggers against him. He pulls them both down onto the couch, pressing a line of kisses across Crowley’s jaw, down his throat, and it wrenches a desperate noise from the demon. A hand cards through his hair, gentle and trembling, and Aziraphale presses as close as physically possible. Crowley slides into his lap, just settling there as his angel litters his neck with feather-light kisses. His fingers massage Aziraphale’s scalp, sending pleasant little shivers down his spine, and Aziraphale murmurs praise into his skin.

“I love you,” Aziraphale breaths against his collarbone, and Crowley makes a noise like a wounded animal.

“Aren’t you supposed to love everything?” Crowley says, a poor attempt at humour, “part of the whole angel gig, innit?”

“I’m in love with you,” Aziraphale says earnestly, and that chokes all the snark right out of Crowley. “I’m not sure I’ve ever loved another being as much as I love you, Crowley.”

“Ngk, well, I,  _ angel _ ,” Crowley stammers helplessly, hiding his face in Aziraphale’s shoulder. “You can’t, you can’t go around  _ proclaiming _ things like that.”

“I’m telling the truth, my dear,” Aziraphale murmurs, fingers tracing up the long line of Crowley’s spine to card through his hair.

“I love you, too,” Crowley whispers, breath ghosting over Aziraphale’s throat, and he makes it sound like it’s a secret, something special just for Aziraphale. They sit like that for awhile, Crowley pressed against the warmth of his angel, long enough that Aziraphale begins to firmly believe that Crowley’s fallen asleep in his lap, before Crowley pulls away. There’s a look in his eyes, like he’s terrified of what he’s about to do, and guides Aziraphale’s hand up to press a kiss to the center of his palm.

“I don’t want to lose you, angel,” he says, soft and afraid, and Aziraphale sees right into that blinding hot core of him. He stares into Crowley’s very essence, laid bare before him by the demon himself, and doesn’t flinch.

“I’m here, Crowley,” Aziraphale replies, opening himself up right back and letting them spill into each other. He expects it to be a little like oil and water, this mingling of being, but they merge like coming home, and suddenly Aziraphale isn’t sure who’s who, exactly. One of them is trembling, gasping the other’s name like their drowning, and one of them is wrapping the other up, whispering in something that  _ certainly  _ isn’t english. It’s a little like worship, they think, but one cannot worship oneself, can they?

_ I can, _ one of them thinks, both of them think,  _ I can when it’s you. I always have. _

They could stay here forever, really, staring into each other, until they forget who’s who. Until it doesn’t matter, because they’re one in the same.  _ I love you, I love you, I need you here, as desperate as that sounds _ .

It’s a dangerous game, though, this melding so freely. It’s warm and gooey where they press into one another, and when Aziraphale tries to pull back, just a little, he finds that parts of himself stick and pull, like chewing gum half dried to the bottom of a shoe. Crowley clings, panicked, as the angel retreats, before relaxing and easing back himself as well. They slide back into themselves enough to look at each other, eyes half lidded and breathing hot and fast between them, but there’s parts that will take time to pull apart, parts that have mixed so easily that the absence of one another leaves them both a little colder in indescribable places.

Crowley’s hands trace the lines of Aziraphale’s face, tender and reverent, and Aziraphale can’t pull his eyes away from that golden gaze, saying so many things that would be inaccurate were he to shape them with his tongue, his teeth, that would come out just twisted enough to burn away the intensity of its meaning. Aziraphale’s fingertips flutter at Crowley’s sides, drag down the slope of his back, memorize each knob of his spine, and Crowley practically preens for him. He’s a sight, all soft and proud, and Aziraphale can feel his wings stretching out and around him on a different plane, like he's showing off.

“I love you,” the demon breaths, a prayer and a promise, dripping from his lips like honey, and somehow it doesn’t come out as twisted as he thought it would.

“I love you, too,” Aziraphale murmurs in return, leans in to press their lips together, and Crowley clings to his lapels.

They can  _ do _ this now, this kissing and touching and saying,  _ thinking _ , what they mean, after six millennia of skirting around it. It makes his head spin, the feel of Aziraphale’s soft lips against his own, and his hands burn paths across his skin even through a layer of clothing. It’s all so much, more than he thought he’d ever get, and his hands tremble against Aziraphale’s chest as the angel kisses him over and over again. It’s like drowning, a little bit, except he thinks that if he pulls away  _ that’s _ what will kill him, not the thing doing the drowning.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, soft and a little concerned, and Crowley thinks he could live in the way those syllables sound in his voice. “Are you quite alright, my dear?”

“Mmmnyuh?” Crowley hums in response, distracted by Aziraphale’s hands coming up to cover his own. His face is flushed, he can feel it, there’s no other reason for him to feel so hot sitting here, unless Aziraphale’s truly setting him aflame with each little touch.

“Are you alright?” Aziraphale repeats, one hand on his cheek now. It takes a monumental amount of self control to keep Crowley from turning his head to press a kiss to the center of his angel’s palm, an amount of self control he does not possess. Aziraphale softens.

“I’m alright,” Crowley murmurs, curling his fingers in Aziraphale’s cuff to keep his hand in place. “Just, you know.”

He gestures vaguely with his other hand, nuzzling his cheek into Aziraphale’s palm, and Aziraphale gives him a smile that makes his insides twist up and melt.

“I  _ don’t _ know,” Aziraphale hums, looking full well like he knows exactly what Crowley means. “Perhaps you should tell me.”

Crowley gives him a helpless look, melting against him the way he’s wanted to since the beginning, stealing a kiss from his lips that tastes better than any forbidden fruit She could ever create.

“You ruin me, angel,” Crowley croaks against his lips, sounding absolutely destroyed, and Aziraphale cradles him close.

“I assure you,” Aziraphale whispers, voice airy and equally wrecked, “the feeling is mutual, my dear.”

Crowley takes a moment to breathe, presses their foreheads together, and Aziraphale can feel tendrils of his soul pressing in, nestling into spaces that seem to be made just for him. It’s comforting, this openness, being separate and together, being held close and loved in a way he didn’t know he could be.

“Angel, Aziraphale,” Crowley says aloud, just to hear it, and Aziraphale responds by opening himself up a little more. Light leaks through, and Crowley basks in it’s warmth like the serpent he is, like it’s the first and only time he’ll ever be warm like this. They have no clue how long they sit like that, soaking in the other, until the bell above the front door jingles cheerily.

Crowley jerks upright and away, closing himself off so abruptly that Aziraphale’s whole body aches with his frigid absence. Morning light floods in from the doorway, the yellow lamp light an unnecessary glow in the room. He snaps his fingers to flip it off, looking over to where Crowley is curled up on the end of the couch, staring very intently at his hands in his lap. His pupils have blown wide sometime earlier that night, and when he glances up at Aziraphale they nearly swallow the yellow surrounding them.

“Uh, hello?” a voice calls from the register, and Aziraphale suddenly remembers why Crowley is no longer in his arms. He straightens himself, the wrinkles from Crowley’s fists smoothing under his palms, and steps out of the back room with what he hopes isn’t too strained of a grin.

“Yes, how can I help you?” he says a bit tersely, eyeing the woman impatiently.

“Well, you, you wouldn’t know how to get  _ here _ , would you?” she says nervously, sliding a slip of paper across the counter. It’s got the address of a nearby hotel, and Aziraphale tries to make himself seem a bit friendlier now that it’s clear she’s not a customer.

“Ah, yes, of course— “

“I’ll call you an Uber,” Crowley interrupts from the doorway to the backroom, having made absolutely no attempt to put himself together apart from sliding on his sunglasses. Aziraphale misses his eyes already.

The woman flushes, clearly making a series of assumptions based on Aziraphale’s manners and Crowley’s appearance, and Crowley gives her a devilish grin.

“In fact, I think you’ll find it waiting outside. It’ll get you where you need to go, I  _ promisssse _ ,” he hisses, moving fluidly around stacks of books. He looks out of place, and yet so very in his element here. Aziraphale feels the surge of occult energy before a placid expression falls across the woman's face, and he tuts at Crowley.

"Thank you," she says blandly before turning and heading for the door, and Crowley's resting his elbows on the counter before it's even closed behind her. Aziraphale looks at him with an amused little grin.

"Well, it's too bad we were so rudely interrupted," the angel hums casually, letting his hand rest just close enough to not be incidental. Crowley grins, reaches out to take Aziraphale's hand between his own, and brings it to his face. Aziraphale's cheeks flush as he presses shameless kisses to the pads of his fingers, flicks his forked tongue over them just to hear the little startled noise it pulls from him.

"We could get breakfast," Crowley suggests lightly, pressing his cheek into Aziraphale's palm as he gazes up at him. His whole expression is soft, and Aziraphale thinks if he took off his sunglasses the emotion in his eyes would incapacitate him for weeks.

"Crêpes," Aziraphale responds enthusiastically, leaning over the counter to bump their noses together. Crowley softens.

"Crêpes it is, angel."

**Author's Note:**

> can you tell i have a thing for hands and tender touches?


End file.
